TO S. G. SAID-GALIEV[1]

Written:Written on July 20, 1921Published:First published in 1923 in the book:Chetvyortoye soveshchaniye TsK R.K.P. s otvetstvennymi rabotnikami natsionalnykh respublik i oblastei(Stenografichesky otchot) (Fourth Conference of the C.C. of the R.C.P. with Responsible Workers of the National Republics and Regions [Stenographic Report]), Moscow.

      Printed from the original.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1971,

      Moscow,Volume 36,

      page541.Translated:Andrew RothsteinTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive.You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work, as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

Tothe first question—yes.

Tothe second—for a long time yet.

Tothe third—not “pedagogues and nurse-maids”, but
helpers.

Tothe fourth—please let me have exact, brief, clear
information on the “two tendencies”.

[1]Thenote was in reply to a letter from S. G. Said-Galiev,
Chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the Tatar
Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, who raised four questions:

“1.Isthere need for the existence of small autonomous republics
within the Russian Soviet Federation in general, and of the Tatar
Republic in particular?

“2.Ifthe answer is ‘yes’, then for how long, or, in other words,
until the fulfilment of what tasks or the attainment of what goals?

“3.Isit right to say that the Communists of the formerly
dominant nation, as having a higher level in every respect, should
play the part of pedagogues and nurses to the Communists and
all other working people of the formerly oppressed nationalities,
whose name has been given to the said autonomous republic (region,commune), and that the former should give up their places to the
latter as they grow?

“4.Inall autonomous republics, the Tatar Republic in this
case, there are two clearly distinct trends (groupings) among
the native Communists (Tatars): one of them takes the standpoint
of class struggle and works for further class differentiation of the
sections of the native population, and the other has a shade of
petty-bourgeois nationalism....

“Isit right ... that the former should enjoy the full and
all-round support of the whole of the R.C.P.(B.) and its supreme
organs, whereas the latter (insofar as they are sincere and have
a burning desire to work for the proletarian revolution and
insofar as they are useful because of their work) should merely be
made use of and simultaneously educated in a spirit of pure
internationalism, without, however, being given preference over
the former, as has been recently the case not only in the Tatar
Republic?”